'End game' for the Higgs: U.S. particle collider helps prove Einstein right with new sightings of elusive 'God particle'

A second particle collider - Chicago's Tevatron - has captured glimpses of the elusive Higgs boson, the ‘God particle’ that would complete Albert Einstein's theory of the universe.

The probability that the particles are not the Higgs, but instead a statistical fluke is now just 1 in 250.

Tevatron's sighting tally with measurements from CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which is to 'turn up' its beams this year to find the particle by Christmas.

'The end game is approaching in the hunt for the Higgs boson,' said Jim Siegrist, Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics.

Chicago's Tevatron particle accelerator: Analyzing data from some 500 trillion sub-atomic particle collisions designed to emulate conditions right after the Big Bang, scientists at Fermilab outside Chicago produced some 1,000 Higgs sightings over a decade of work

Analyzing data from some 500 trillion sub-atomic particle collisions designed to emulate conditions right after the Big Bang, scientists at Fermilab outside Chicago produced some 1,000 Higgs sightings over a decade of work.

‘Unfortunately, this hint is not significant enough to conclude that the Higgs boson exists,’ said Rob Roser, a physicist at Fermilab, near Chicago.

The image scientists have of the short-lived Higgs particles, which almost immediately decay into other particles, is still slightly ‘fuzzy,’ Roser said.

The probability that what physicists detected is not a Higgs boson and is instead a statistical fluke was 1 in 250, which is near the threshold of 1 in 740 that physics has set to establish proof of a sub-atomic particle's existence.

The hunt for the Higgs boson is significant because it would show the existence of an invisible field thought to permeate the entire universe.

The probability that what physicists detected is not a Higgs boson and is instead a statistical fluke was 1 in 250, which is near the threshold of 1 in 740 that physics has set to establish proof of a sub-atomic particle's existence

The Higgs field was posited in the 1960s by British scientist Peter Higgs as the way that matter obtained mass after the universe was created during the Big Bang.

According to the theory, it was the agent that made the stars, planets and life possible by giving mass to most elementary particles. Some gave it the nickname the ‘God particle.’

Discovery of the Higgs would also complete Einstein's Standard Model of Physics. If it does not exist, scientists would have to search elsewhere for how particles gained mass and why they are not merely shooting aimlessly through the universe.

The weight of Higgs particles found at Fermilab was consistent with those detected at the more powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, at the CERN research center near Geneva, Switzerland.

Before Fermilab's four-mile (6.3-km) -long Tevatron was closed for good in September 2011 and the particle accelerator baton handed to CERN, scientists pushed the collider to produce as many sub-atomic collisions as possible.

The CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment at CERN: CERN will turn up the LHC's beam energy to 4 TeVs, 0.5 TeV higher than last year, and run the particle accelerator until November

Machinery at the Large Hadron Collider: The physicists have one year to complete their experiments before the LHC shuts down for 20 months to upgrade its beam to an even higher energy of 7 TeV

Physicists from around the world are at work at both laboratories, with hundreds still laboring at Fermilab analyzing the data from its experiments.

‘We've used up most of our data’ at Fermilab, Roser said. ‘We'll do a few more experiments and try to have a final answer in June.’

Physicists at the Large Hadron
Collider are to 'turn up' the beams of the enormous machine to a higher
beam energy for a last-ditch hunt for the Higgs boson, a theoretical
particle which would change physics.

CERN
will turn up the LHC's beam energy to 4 TeVs, 0.5 TeV higher than last
year, and run the particle accelerator until November.

The
physicists have one year to complete their experiments before the LHC
shuts down for 20 months to upgrade its beam to an even higher energy of
7 TeV.

'When we started operating the LHC for physics in 2010, we chose the
lowest safe beam energy consistent with the physics we wanted to do,'
said CERN’s Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers.

'Two
good years of operational experience with beam and many additional
measurements made during 2011 give us the confidence to safely move up a
notch, and thereby extend the physics reach of the experiments before
we go into the LHC’s first long shutdown.'

'By the time the LHC goes into its first long stop at the end of this
year, we will either know that a Higgs particle exists or have ruled out
the existence of a Standard Model Higgs,' said CERN’s Research
Director, Sergio Bertolucci.

'Either would be a major advance in our
exploration of nature, bringing us closer to understanding how the
fundamental particles acquire their mass, and marking the beginning of a
new chapter in particle physics.'

The scientists aim to deliver the maximum possible amount of data in 2012 before the LHC goes into a long shutdown.

The data target for 2012 is three times higher than in 2011.

The
LHC’s excellent performance in 2010 and 2011 has brought tantalising
hints of new physics, notably narrowing the range of masses available to
the Higgs particle to a window of just 16 GeV.

Within this window, both the ATLAS and CMS experiments have seen hints that a Higgs might exist in the mass range 124-126 GeV.

However,
to turn those hints into a discovery, or to rule out the Standard Model
Higgs particle altogether, requires one more year’s worth of data.